SLOWBURN #2 - Decision Made For Her

Nike counted the seconds between the beeps of the monitor. Steady, rhythmic, predictable. Unlike everything else. Unlike her mother's trembling hands, her father's tight mouth, or the way the doctors spoke over her as if she wasn't even in the room.

"Her responses are flattening," one of them said. Dr. Levine. He was always taking notes, always watching her with his calm, clinical gaze. "She's no longer engaging in emotional recall, and her physical responses to stimuli have decreased."

"Which means?" her father pressed.

Nike stared out the window.

"It suggests dissociative detachment. A distancing from self, surroundings, and past emotional bonds. We see this in cases where the patient is unable to reconcile their past with their current state."

Her mother made a small sound. "But she knows who we are."

"Yes," Dr. Levine said patiently. "But knowledge isn't memory. She recognizes you, but there's no emotional response attached."

Nike listened to them the way she listened to rain against glass--just a sound in the background, nothing to react to.

"She doesn't even react to her own sorority sisters," her father muttered, like it was a betrayal.

Nike wanted to tell him she wasn't doing it on purpose. That she wasn't choosing this. But wasn't she? She could try harder, couldn't she? Fake it? Pretend? But what was the point?

She wasn't Nike Carson, the nice girl with pink sweaters and pearl earrings, not really. She was just... here. Sitting in a stiff hospital bed, in a gown that smelled like antiseptic, feeling nothing.

Her mother tried again, her voice cracking. "Nike, sweetie, do you know what your favorite food is?"

Nike turned to her. "No."

Her mother blinked fast.

"What about the name of your first pet?"

Nike paused, as if waiting for something to surface. It didn't. She shook her head.

Her father shifted. "Do you remember what you wanted to be when you grew up?"

Nike met his gaze. "I don't know."

Silence.

More notes scratched into the doctor's clipboard.

Her mother wiped her eyes. Her father exhaled, heavy, frustrated.

Nike just stared at them, waiting for the part where she was supposed to care.

She knew these things mattered. She knew these people mattered. But not to her.

Not anymore.

--

On the fifth day, they tested her again.

Dr. Levine asked more questions, trying to jog something, anything.

"What does your mother's perfume smell like?"

Nike hesitated. She should know this. She must have hugged her mother thousands of times.

But she couldn't conjure it.

"I don't know."

Dr. Levine made another note.

Nike clenched her fingers. She hated the notes.

"What about your father's favorite saying?"

Another pause. Another failure.

Dr. Levine set the clipboard down. "And how does that make you feel?"

Nike licked her lips. She should say something like frustrated or sad, shouldn't she? But all she could manage was:

"Empty."

Her mother made a choked sound.

Her father stood. "She's getting worse."

"She's not getting worse," Dr. Levine corrected, "but she's also not progressing."

Nike should have felt something about that. Instead, she just let it sink in like a fact.

Then came the words that would change everything.

"We've been discussing alternative treatment options."

Nike wasn't included in the next conversation.

The decision about her own life happened in a conference room she wasn't in.

She imagined them sitting there, her mother twisting a napkin in her hands, her father stiff and logical, Dr. Levine calm and persuasive.

"She's not engaging with her emotions," he would have said. "She's resisting attachments. The safest place for her to regain a sense of self would be a specialized care facility."

That's what they called it. A care facility. Not an asylum. Not a psychiatric hospital. A place for her to get better.

Her parents signed the papers that moved her there before she even had a chance to argue. Not that she would have. Nike didn't fight when they told her. She just nodded. The nurse packed up her things. Her mother cried again. And the next morning, a van arrived to take her away.

Nike sat in the back seat, staring out the window as the hospital faded behind her. The roads stretched wide, trees blurring past. It felt like they were driving her somewhere outside of the world. She wondered if she should feel something. Regret, fear, loss. She felt none of it. Only a strange, quiet anticipation.

Somewhere in the distance, behind the fences and locked doors, he was waiting. She didn't know why she knew that.

But she did.

--